ANR advisors in action
UCCE studies a Dutch invention for regenerating trees and shrubs on oak woodland
Video transcript:
What we’re doing here is a little demonstration. We’re trying to find ways , especially when we are way out on these ranches, in the back country, how do you get water there every day or very often in order to keep these things alive, and it’s quite difficult and can be very expensive.
We have 10 of these Waterboxes. We’re looking at elderberry bushes and blue oak and valley oak seedlings. We planted these in April of this year. And you can see this elderberry has just really taken off and is looking very, very nice.
What the Waterboxx is is a device that was developed by Peter Hoff over in Holland that basically the concept is to be able to plant tree seedlings or shrub seedlings and it self waters them throughout the year. And the way it accomplishes that, you start with this little box, it’s about two feet in diameter and about eight or 10 inches deep, and you plant the seedlings down in here, in the middle, and then there’s this little wick that takes the water from this little box and wicks it down to the plant roots on a daily basis. It’s designed in a way that the lid, is built so that it captures dew at night, by cooling down these surfaces such that the water condenses and it drains it back into the box and refills it as it uses it on a daily basis.
When you begin you fill this up with about four gallons of water, when you first plant the seedling, and then you’re supposedly able to leave it and just walk away and hopefully it will do its job all year without having to provide additional water. They’ve shown this to work in other parts of the world and when George saw this he was very interested so we’re going to try it on the Central Coast, in the eastern part of the county where it is a lot dryer than the coastal part and see how it works here.